Beyond belief

Adrian Peterson will not win the 2012 NFL Most Valuable Player award. But he's the leading candidate for this:

Most Improbable, Mind-Boggling, Expectation-Defying, Are-You-Kidding-Me? Comeback in the History of Sports.

To review: Peterson, the All-Pro running back of the Minnesota Vikings, tore multiple ligaments in his left knee — including the dreaded ACL — on Dec. 24. Of 2011. Less than a year later, he leads the NFL in rushing, and it isn't even close.

No one, at least in professional football, ever has returned that quickly and effectively from a torn ACL. Part of it has to do with the marvels of modern medicine. Most of it has to do with the will, work ethic and wondrous gifts possessed by the one and only Adrian Peterson.

“He does things beyond what we ask him to do, obviously,” Peterson's position coach, James Saxon, said by phone Wednesday. “I'm not going to sit here and take credit for what he does. I don't think anybody in this building will. The people who need to take the most credit are his mother and father. They gave him DNA no one else has quite had.”

After Peterson's latest performance — his seventh consecutive 100-yard rushing game in a 21-14 victory over Chicago — Minnesota quarterback Christian Ponder pondered whether Peterson is human. As far as anyone knows, he is. But the fact that he's part of the same species as the rest of us is a technicality.

“He's obviously in a class alone, not to take anything away from those guys. He's a once-in-a-lifetime type player. He's proven that time and time again.”

Peterson approached this season as if he had something to prove, which he did: that he could come back better than ever from a knee injury that threatened to make him a lesser player.

It isn't uncommon these days for athletes to return from torn ACLs; heck, Carolina linebacker Thomas Davis is playing after tearing the ACL in his right knee for a third time early last season.

What's astounding about Peterson's comeback is that he's having a career year. Peterson's 1,600 rushing yards with three games to go are 160 shy of his personal high and exceed the total of 23 other
teams. He is only the third player in NFL history to rush for 1,600 or more yards, average 6.0 or more yards per carry and score 10 or more touchdowns in his team's first 13 games. Jim Brown (1963) and O.J. Simpson ('73, '75) are the others.

Both all-time greats can relate to being the prime focus of opposing defenses. It's indisputably true in Peterson's case and only adds to the degree of difficulty of his accomplishments.

Ponder is the 27th-rated quarterback in the NFL. No team has passed for fewer yards than the Vikings. Since Week 9, they haven't had the services of top-flight receiver Percy Harvin, himself an MVP candidate before suffering a season-ending ankle injury.

Yet, starting with the game in which Harvin got hurt, Peterson has averaged 165 yards per game and 7.2 yards per carry. How is that possible?

“It's all willpower, man,” Peterson told reporters after the Bears game, in which he rushed for 154 yards and two touchdowns on 31 attempts. “They pretty much know we're going to run the ball.”

Defenses know what's coming. That doesn't mean they can stop it. Peterson leads the league with 1,043 yards after contact, according to Pro Football Focus. That figure would put him eighth on the overall rushing-yardage leader board.

Peterson's size (6-foot-1, 217 pounds), speed and physicality make him a nightmare to tackle. But there's something more to it than that.

“What happens to defenses is, they see him on tape, they see the gifts that he has, but they don't realize until they actually touch him what it's like,” Saxon said.

Saxon can relate. He joined the Vikings' staff in January 2011 but couldn't see Peterson up close in pads until training camp because of the NFL lockout.

“Once I got a chance to see and feel the guy on the practice field,” Saxon said, “he was more special than I even imagined.”

As special as this season has been and could be — Peterson needs to average 133.3 yards in the final three games to become the seventh NFL player to rush for 2,000 yards — it likely won't result in him winning the MVP award. Although the Vikings are 7-6, they might not make the playoffs. A non-QB hasn't won the award since LaDainian Tomlinson in 2006.

Incredibly, because of what Peyton Manning is doing in Denver, Peterson might not win the Comeback Player of the Year award either. He'll just have to settle for Greatest Comeback of All Time.

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